La marihuana legal más costosa está obligando a bajar el precio de la versión ilegal.
La medida de Canadá para legalizar la marihuana ha sido ampliamente elogiada, sin embargo, el camino hacia la estabilización de la industria ha sido difícil por una variedad de razones, un informe trimestral de StatsCan sugiere que la brecha de precios entre la marihuana legal e ilegal se está ampliando.
¿Lo último? La marihuana legal más costosa está obligando a bajar el precio de la versión ilegal de la droga.
Statistics Canada informó recientemente que la brecha de precios entre los dos tipos de cannabis es de hasta 4,72 dólares el gramo, en promedio.
StatsCan asked Canadian pot users to tell them about how often they use the drug, and what they pay for it when they do, and the stats are revealing.
Based on 572 voluntary responses in the second quarter of 2019, StatsCan said the illegal price of marijuana fell from $6.23 per gram on average at the start of the year to $5.93 a gram in the three months up to the end of June.
Legal cannabis, meanwhile, went from $10.21 per gram to $10.65. That means the gap between the two is now as wide as $4.72 a gram.
While StatsCan relies on user submissions for a lot of its information, it supplements that data by monitoring prices from illegal online cannabis retailers. The data agency says it obtained more than 423,000 prices that way during the three-month period and, as such, has calculated that across all types of cannabis, the average price per gram of dried cannabis was $8.44 in the second quarter of 2019, down from $8.61 in the first quarter.
Illegal industry still thriving
And the gap is growing, not getting smaller. Three months ago, StatsCan’s report of the first full quarter of price information showed the gap between legal marijuana and the illegal variety was $3.62 a gram.
Tellingly, more than half — 59% — of respondents to the StatsCan survey said they purchased illegal cannabis during the period.
Más de un tercio de ellos dijeron que lo hicieron porque la versión legal es demasiado cara. El resto dijo que lo hizo porque prefería la calidad de las opciones ilegales o porque era demasiado difícil comprar la versión legal en el lugar donde viven.
Canadá legalizó el uso recreativo de la marihuana en octubre pasado, pero el despliegue en todo el país ha estado plagado de retrasos, suministro limitado y otros problemas logísticos.
